Texas student dies after swallowing a bag of meth

Gather round, kids, because The Daily Caller is about to serve up some shrewd advice: never swallow a bag of meth. Just don’t. Even if it seems like a good idea, it’s not.

Madeleine Gene Richardson did not follow this bright-line rule. The 19-year-old Kingwood, Tex. resident died after consuming a baggie of methamphetamine when police pulled over the car in which was a passenger, reports The Beaumont Enterprise.

On Friday, a Washington County sheriff’s deputy pulled the car over at 2:45 p.m. on U.S. 290 about 70 miles northwest of Houston. The driver was Gary Keife, 20. He was allegedly speeding.

The Daily Mail notes that Keife drove the car for about a mile after the deputy initially began flashing his lights.

At some presumably panicked point before the traffic stop, Richardson swallowed the baggie of meth. The results of an autopsy are not yet public, so it’s not clear exactly how much of the drug Richardson swallowed.

Methamphetamine possession is a felony in The Lone Star State and can mean prison time.

After finding a small amount of marijuana as well as pipes and drug paraphernalia in the car, the deputy arrested Richardson and Keife. (A third female passenger who was also in the vehicle was not arrested for some reason.)

Things began to go very badly for Richardson by the time police had brought her to jail a few minutes later.

“They noted that she looked a little bit ill and was starting to shake,” Chief Deputy Jay Petrash told The Enterprise. “They asked what she took, and she admitted to swallowing a baggie of meth.”

The 19-year-old was then rushed to a nearby hospital. She was pronounced dead at 4:30 a.m. on July 6.